When early flowers and bees fall out of sync

HostI was walking through the park the other day and saw a few bright yellow flowers already popping up, even though the air still feels like the middle of winter. It made me think about the bees that usually show up to visit them.

HostIf those flowers are ready for business but the bees are still tucked away, what actually happens on the ground?

GuestIt's a real mess, to be honest. We usually think of spring as this one big event where everything wakes up together, but it's more like a dance where the two partners are listening to different songs. The flowers are mostly listening to the air. If the sun stays out for a few days and the ground warms up, they take that as a green light to bloom. But many bees are on a timer that's much harder to change. They might be waiting for the days to get longer or for the deep soil to hit a very specific temperature that takes a long time to reach.

HostSo the flowers are basically jumping the gun while the bees are still asleep.

GuestYeah, the plants are just reacting to what they feel right then. But if they bloom three weeks early and the bees don't crawl out of the ground for another month, you have a huge problem. We call this a mismatch. The flower opens its petals, puts out its sweet nectar, and waits. But nobody comes to visit. After a few days, that flower starts to wilt. If the bees aren't there to move the pollen around during that tiny window, the plant won't make any seeds.

HostBut surely a few days here or there's not that big of a deal. I mean, flowers stay open for a while, do they not?

GuestYou would be surprised how fast it goes. For some plants, the window is incredibly tight. There are lilies in the mountains that might only be at their best for about a week. If the peak of the bee population misses that week by even five or six days, the chance for that plant to make the next group of seeds drops by half. And it's not just bad for the plants. Think about the bees. They wake up very hungry. They have been sleeping all winter and they need sugar right away to keep going. If they come out and find a field of dead, brown flowers because the bloom happened weeks ago, they can starve before they even get started.

HostWait, so it's a double hit. The plants don't get to have kids and the bees don't get to eat. But can the bees not just find something else? There's usually some other weed or tree blooming nearby.

GuestSometimes they can, but many bees are very picky eaters. Some types only visit one specific kind of flower. If that one flower is gone, that's the end of the line for them. Even for the bees that aren't picky, like the honeybees we see in gardens, the timing still matters for the whole hive. If the queen starts laying eggs because she thinks spring is here, but there's no food coming in to feed the babies, the whole colony can fall apart. We're seeing this happen with bumblebees in high mountain meadows. The snow melts too fast, the flowers bloom and die, and by the time the big queen bees come out to start their nests, the buffet is already closed.

HostThat feels like a very fragile way to run a world. If it's this easy to break, how did they ever manage to survive this long?

GuestFor thousands of years, the cues stayed the same. The weather was steady enough that the heat and the long days happened around the same time. Now, the heat is coming much earlier, but the sun’s schedule hasn't changed. This is where the friction comes in. Some species can try to keep up. We see some bees that are starting to wake up earlier to match the heat. But they're not all changing at the same speed. It's like a race where the track is moving under your feet and nobody knows where the finish line is anymore.

HostSo, if the bees and flowers keep drifting apart, does this eventually mean we just lose the plants we like to look at, or is the catch bigger than that?

GuestIt's much bigger. When a plant doesn't get its pollen moved, it doesn't make fruit or seeds. That means the birds that eat those seeds have nothing to find for the winter. The mice and squirrels go hungry, too. Then the hawks that eat the mice have a hard time. It's a chain reaction that goes all the way up. We also have to think about our own food. A huge part of what we eat, like apples or berries, needs those bees to show up at the exact right second. If the trees bloom during a freak warm week in March and the bees are still asleep, we don't get apples in October.

HostIt sounds like we're watching a very old clock get bumped and now the gears are grinding against each other.

GuestThat's a good way to put it. We're seeing some bees try to move north to find the cold they're used to, but the plants can't just pick up and walk. They're stuck. So the plants stay put and bloom too early, while the bees move away or die out. We're finding places now where the flowers are still beautiful, but they're essentially ghosts because they're not making any new seeds to replace themselves when they die.

HostIs there any way to fix the clock, or are we just watching it break?

GuestWe can't really force the bees to wake up, but we can give them a better chance. People are starting to plant bridge flowers. These are just different types of plants that bloom at different times so there's always some food available, no matter when a bee wakes up. The more variety there's in a garden or a park, the more likely it's that a hungry bee will find something to eat, even if its favorite flower finished blooming two weeks ago. It's about building a safety net so that one bad year of timing doesn't wipe out a whole group of insects.

GuestThe real worry is that we don't know how far we can push this before the whole system just snaps and can't be fixed.

HostThose yellow petals in the park don't look quite as cheery when you realize they might be waiting for a guest who's still fast asleep.